2024 journal article
Assessing the utility of shellfish sanitation monitoring data for long-term estuarine water quality analysis
MARINE POLLUTION BULLETIN, 203.
author keywords: Long-term monitoring; Water quality; Fecal indicator bacteria; Shellfish sanitation; Mann-Kendall trend analysis
open access via doi.org (repository)
UN Sustainable Development Goal Categories
3. Good Health and Well-being
(Web of Science)
6. Clean Water and Sanitation
(Web of Science; OpenAlex)
11. Sustainable Cities and Communities
(Web of Science)
14. Life Below Water
(Web of Science)
Source: Web Of Science
Added: June 17, 2024
Regular testing of coastal waters for fecal coliform bacteria by shellfish sanitation programs could provide data to fill large gaps in existing coastal water quality monitoring, but research is needed to understand the opportunities and limitations of using these data for inference of long-term trends. In this study, we analyzed spatiotemporal trends from multidecadal fecal coliform concentration observations collected by a shellfish sanitation program, and assessed the feasibility of using these monitoring data to infer long-term water quality dynamics. We evaluated trends in fecal coliform concentrations for a 20-year period (1999-2021) using data collected from spatially fixed sampling sites (n = 466) in North Carolina (USA). Findings indicated that shellfish sanitation data can be used for long-term water quality inference under relatively stationary management conditions, and that salinity trends can be used to investigate management-driven bias in fecal coliform observations collected in a particular area.